Don't you think this young
female--WHAT a word! you ought to be ashamed of it--DON'T you think
she is good-looking, Daddy, dear?"
She looked provokingly up into his face and he looked fondly down
into hers.
"Don't you?" she repeated.
"We-ll, I--I don't know as I'd want to go so far as to say that. I
presume likely her face might not stop a meetin'-house clock on a
dark night, but--"
As they were in a secluded spot where a high hedge screened them
from observation Miss Maud playfully boxed her parent's ears, a
proceeding which he seemed to enjoy hugely.
But there was reason in the captain's caution, nevertheless. Miss
Maud's "teasing" concerning the widow had set Jed to thinking. The
"trial" month was almost up. In a little while he would have to
give his decision as to whether the little Winslow house was to
continue to be occupied by Barbara and her mother, or whether it
was to be, as it had been for years, closed and shuttered tight.
He had permitted them to occupy it for that month, on the spur of
the moment, as the result of a promise made upon impulse, a
characteristic Jed Winslow impulse. Now, however, he must decide
in cold blood whether or not it should be theirs for another eleven
months at least.
In his conversation with Captain Sam, the conversation which took
place immediately after the Armstrongs came, he had stoutly
maintained that the latter would not wish to stay longer than the
month, that his own proximity as landlord and neighbor would be
unbearable longer than that period.
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